The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mavericks, by William MacLeod Raine This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Mavericks Author: William MacLeod Raine Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14520] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAVERICKS *** Produced by Kathryn Lybarger and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE RIDER SLEWED IN THE SADDLE WITH HIS WHOLE ATTENTION UPON POSSIBLE PURSUIT. (Page 33) MAVERICKS BY WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE AUTHOR OF WYOMING, RIDGWAY OF MONTANA, BUCKY O'CONNOR, A TEXAS RANGER, ETC. ILLUSTRATIONS BY CLARENCE ROWE GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 1911 STREET & SMITH 1912 G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY TO MY MOTHER "In vain men tell us time can alter Old loves, or make old memories falter." CONTENTS I. PHYLLIS II. THE NESTER III. CAUGHT RED-HANDED IV. "I'M A RUSTLER AND A THIEF, AM I?" V. AN AIDER AND ABETTOR VI. A GOOD FRIEND VII. A SHOT FROM AMBUSH VIII. MISS GOING-ON-EIGHTEEN IX. PUNISHMENT X. INTO THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY XI. TOM DIXON XII. THE ESCAPE XIII. A MISTAKE XIV. A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION XV. THE BRAND BLOTTER XVI. A WATERSPOUT XVII. THE HOLD-UP XVIII. BRILL HEALY AIRS HIS SENTIMENTS XIX. THE ROAN WITH THE WHITE STOCKINGS XX. YEAGER RIDES TO NOCHES XXI. BREAKING DOWN AN ALIBI XXII. SURRENDER XXIII. AT THE RODEO XXIV. MISSING XXV. LARRY TELLS A BEAR STORY XXVI. THE MAN HUNT XXVII. THE ROUND-UP LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The rider slewed in the saddle with his whole attention upon possible pursuit. She drew back as if he had struck her, all the sparkling eagerness driven from her face. "Drop that gun!" They grappled in silence save for the heavy panting that evidenced the tension of their efforts. CHAPTER I PHYLLIS Phyllis leaned against the door-jamb and looked down the long road which wound up from the valley and lost itself now and again in the land waves. Miles away she could see a little cloud of dust travelling behind the microscopic stage, which moved toward her almost as imperceptibly as the minute-hand of a clock. A bronco was descending the hill trail from the Flagstaff mine, and its rider announced his coming with song in a voice young and glad. "My love has breath o' roses, O' roses, o' roses, And cheeks like summer posies All fresh with morning dew," floated the words to her across the sunlit open. If the girl heard, she heeded not. One might have guessed her a sullen, silent lass, and would have done her less than justice. For the storm in her eyes and the curl of the lip were born of a mood and not of habit. They had to do with the gay vocalist who drew his horse up in front of her and relaxed into the easy droop of the experienced rider at rest. "Don't see me, do you?" he asked, smiling. Her dark, level gaze came round and met his sunniness without response. "Yes, I see you, Tom Dixon." "And you don't think you see much then?" he suggested lightly. She gave him no other answer than the one he found in the rigor of her straight figure and the flash of her dark eyes. "Mad at me, Phyl?" Crossing his arms on the pommel of the saddle he leaned toward her, half coaxing, half teasing. The girl chose to ignore him and withdrew her gaze to the stage, still creeping antlike toward the hills. "My love has breath o' roses, O' roses, o' roses," he hummed audaciously, ready to catch her smile when it came. It did not come. He thought he had never seen her carry her dusky good looks more scornfully. With a movement of impatience she brushed back a rebellious lock of blue-black hair from her temple. "Somebody's acting right foolish," he continued jauntily. "It was all in fun, and in a game at that." "I wasn't playing," he heard, though the profile did not turn in the least toward him. "Well, I hated to let you stay a wall-flower." "I don't play kissing games any more," she informed him with dignity. "Sho, Phyl! I told you 'twas only in fun," he justified himself. "A kiss ain't anything to make so much fuss over. You ain't the first girl that ever was kissed." She glanced quickly at him, recalling stories she had heard of his boldness with girls. He had taken off his hat and the golden locks of the boy gleamed in the sunlight. Handsome he surely was, though a critic might have found weakness in the lower part of the face. Chin and mouth lacked firmness. "So I've been told," she answered tartly. "Jealous?" "No," she exploded. Slipping to the ground, he trailed his rein. "You don't need to depend on hearing," he said, moving toward her. "What do you mean?" she flared. "You remember well enough—at the social down to Peterson's." "We were children then—or I was." "And you're not a kid now?" "No, I'm not." "Here's congratulations, Miss Sanderson. You've put away childish things and now you have become a woman." Angrily the girl struck down his outstretched hand. "After this, if a fellow should kiss you, it would be a crime, wouldn't it?" he bantered. "Don't you dare try it, Tom Dixon," she flashed fiercely. Hitherto he had usually thought of her as a school girl, even though she was teaching in the Willow's district. Now it came to him with what dignity and unconscious pride her head was poised, how little the home-made print could conceal the long, free lines of her figure, still slender with the immaturity of youth. Soon now the woman in her would awaken and would blossom abundantly as the spring poppies were doing on the mountain side. Her sullen sweetness was very close to him. The rapid rise and fall of her bosom, the underlying flush in her dusky cheeks, the childish pout of the full lips, all joined in the challenge of her words. Mostly it was pure boyishness, the impish desire to tease, that struck the audacious sparkle to his eyes, but there was, too, a masculine impulse he did not analyse. "So you won't be friends?" If he had gone about it the right way he might have found forgiveness easily enough. But this did not happen to be the right way. "No, I won't." And she gave him her profile again. "Then we might as well have something worth while to quarrel about," he said, and slipping his arm round her neck, he tilted her face toward him. With a low cry she twisted free, pushing him from her. Beneath the fierce glow of her eyes his laughter was dashed. He forgot his expected trivial triumph, for they flashed at him now no childish petulance, but the scorn of a woman, a scorn in the heat of which his vanity withered and the thing he had tried to do stood forth a bare insult. "How dare you!" she gasped. Straight up the stairs to her room she ran, turned the lock, and threw herself passionately on the bed. She hated him...hated him...hated him. Over and over again she told herself this, crying it into the pillows where she had hidden her hot cheeks. She would make him pay for this insult some day. She would find a way to trample on him, to make him eat dirt for this. Of course she would never speak to him again—never so long as she lived. He had insulted her grossly. Her turbulent Southern blood boiled with wrath. It was characteristic of the girl that she did not once think of taking her grievance to her hot-headed father or to her brother. She could pay her own debts without involving them. And it was in character, too, that she did not let the inner tumult interfere with her external duties. As soon as she heard the stage breasting the hill, she was up from the bed as swift as a panther and at her dressing- table dabbing with a kerchief at the telltale eyes and cheeks. Before the passengers began streaming into the house for dinner she was her competent self, had already cast a supervising eye over Becky the cook and Manuel the waiter, to see that everything was in readiness, and behind the official cage had fallen to arranging the mail that had just come up from Noches on the stage. From this point of vantage she could cast an occasional look into the dining-room to see that all was going well there. Once, glancing through the window, she saw Tom Dixon in conversation with a half-grown youngster in leathers, gauntlets, and spurs. A coin was changing hands from the older boy to the younger, and as soon as the delivery window was raised little Bud Tryon shuffled in to get the family mail and that of Tom. Also he pushed through the opening a folded paper evidently torn from a notebook. "This here is for you, Phyl," he explained. She pushed it back. "I'm too busy to read it." "It's from Tom," he further volunteered. "Is it?" She took the paper quietly but with a swift, repressed passion, tore it across, folded the pieces together, rent them again, and tossed the fragments through the window to the floor. "Do you want the mail for the Gordons, too, Mr. Purdy?" she coolly asked the next in line over the tow head of Bud. The boy grinned and ducked from his place through the door. Through the open window there drifted to her presently the sound of a smothered curse, followed by the rapid thud of a horse's hoofs. Phyllis did not look, but a wicked gleam came into her black eyes. As well as if she had seen him she beheld a picture of a sulky youth spurring home in dudgeon, a scowl of discontent on his handsome, boyish face. He had come down the mountain trail singing, but no music travelled with him on his return journey. Nor had she alone known this. Without deigning to notice it, she caught a wink and a nod from one vaquero to another. It was certain they would not forget to "rub it in" when next they met Master Tom. She promised herself, as she handed out newspapers and letters to the cowmen, sheep-herders, and miners who had ridden in to the stage station for their mail, to teach that young man his place. "I'll take a dollar's worth of two's." Phyllis turned her head in the slow, disdainful fashion she had inherited from her Southern ancestors and without a word pushed the sheet of stamps through the window. That voice, with its hint of sardonic amusement, was like a trumpet call to battle. "Any mail for Buck Weaver?" "No," she answered promptly without looking. "Sure?" "Yes." "Couldn't be overlooking any, could you?" Her eyes met his with the rapier steel of hostility. He was mocking her, for his mail all came to Saguaro. The man was her father's enemy. He had no business here. His coming was of a piece with all the rest of his insolence. Phyllis hated him with the lusty healthy hatred of youth. She had her father's generosity and courage, his quick indignation against wrong and injustice, and banked within her much of his passionate lawlessness. "I know my business, sir." Weaver turned from the window and came front to front with old Jim Sanderson. The burning black eyes of the Southerner, set in sockets of extraordinary depths, blazed from a grim, hostile face. Always when he felt ugliest Sanderson's drawl became more pronounced. His daughter, hearing now the slow, gentle voice, ran quickly round the counter and slipped an arm into that of her father. "This hyer is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Weaver," he was saying. "It's been quite some time since I've seen you all in my house before, makin' you'self at home so pleasantly. It's ce'tainly an honor, seh." "Don't get buck ague, Sanderson. I'm here because I'm here. That's reason a-plenty for me," Weaver told him contemptuously. "But not for me, seh. When you come into my house——" "I didn't come into your house." "Why—why——" "Father!" implored the girl. "It's a government post-office. He has a right here as long as he behaves." "H'm!" the old fire-eater snorted. "I'd be obliged just the same, Mr. Weaver, if you'd transact your business and then light a shuck." "Dad!" the girl begged. He patted her head awkwardly as it lay on his arm. "Now don't you worry, honey. There ain't going to be any trouble —leastways none of my making. I ain't a-forgettin' my promise to you-all. But I ain't sittin' down whilst anybody tromples on me neither." "He wouldn't try to do that here," Phyllis reminded him. Weaver laughed in grim irony. "I'm surely much obliged to you for protecting me." And to the father he added carelessly: "Keep your shirt on, Sanderson. I'm not trying to break into society. And when I do I reckon it won't be with a sheep outfit I'll trail." With which parting shot he turned on his heel, arrogant and imperious to the last virile inch of him. CHAPTER II THE NESTER With the jingle of trailing spur Buck Weaver passed from the post-office to the porch, where public opinion was wont to formulate itself while waiting for the mail to be distributed. Here twice a week it had sat for many years, had heard evidence, passed judgment, condemned or acquitted. For at this store the Malpais country bought its ammunition, its tobacco, and its canned goods; and on this porch its opinions had sifted down to convictions. From this common meeting ground the gossip of Cattleland was scattered far and wide. Weaver filled the doorway while he drew on his gauntlets. He was the owner of the Twin Star outfit, the biggest cattle company in that country. Nearly twenty years ago, while still a boy of eighteen, he had begun in a small way. The Malpais had been a wild and lawless place then, but in all the turbid days that followed Buck Weaver had held his own ruthlessly by adroit manipulation, shrewd sense, and implacable daring. Some outfits he had bought out; others he had driven away. Those that survived were at a respectable distance from him. Only the settlers in the hills remained to trouble him. He had come to be the big man of the district, dominating its social, business, and political activities. "What's this I hear about another settler up on Bear Creek?" he asked curtly after he had gathered up his bridle and swung to the saddle. "That's the way Jim Budd's telling it, Mr. Weaver. Another nester homesteaded there," old Joe Yeager answered casually, chewing tobacco with a noncommittal air. "Fine! There'll soon be a right smart settlement up near the headwaters of the creeks, I shouldn't wonder. The cow business is getting to be a mighty profitable one when you don't own any," Buck said dryly. The others laughed, but with small merriment. They were either small cattle owners themselves or range riders whose living depended on the business, and during the past two years a band of rustlers had operated so boldly as to have wiped out the profits of some of the ranchers. Most of them disliked Buck extremely for his overbearing ways. But they did not usually tell him so. On this particular subject, too, they joined hand with him. "You're dead right, Mr. Weaver. It ce'tainly must be stopped." The man who spoke rolled a cigarette and lit it. Like the rest he was in the common garb of the plains. The broad- brimmed felt hat, the shiny leather chaps, the loosely knotted bandanna, were as much a matter of course as the hard- eyed, weather-beaten look that comes of life under an untempered sun. But Brill Healy claimed a distinction above his fellows. He was a black-haired, picturesque fellow, as supple as a panther, reckless and yet wary. "We'll have rustling as long as we have nesters, Brill," Buck told him. "If that's the case we'll serve notice on the nesters to get out," Healy replied. Buck grinned. Indomitable fighter though he was, he had been unable to roll back the advancing tide of settlement. Here and there homesteaders had taken up land and had brought in small bunches of cattle. Most of these were honest men, others suspected rustlers. But Buck's fiat had not sufficed to keep them out. They had held stoutly to their own and—he suspected—a good deal more than their own. Calves had been branded secretly and cows killed or driven away. "Go to it, Brill," Weaver jeered. "I'm wishing you all the luck in the world." He touched his pony with the spur and swept up the road in a cloud of white dust. Not till he had disappeared did conversation renew itself languidly, for Seven Mile Ranch was lying under the lethargy of a summery sun. "I expect Buck's got the right of it," volunteered a brawny youth known as Slim. "All you got to do is to take up a claim near a couple of big outfits with easy brands, then keep your iron hot and industrious. There's sure money in being a nester." Despite the soft drawl of his voice, he spoke with bitterness, as did the others. Every day the feeling was growing stronger that the rustling must be stopped if they were going to continue to run cattle. The thieves had operated with a boldness and a shrewdness that fairly outwitted the ranchers. Enough horses and cattle had been driven across the line to stock a respectable ranch. Not one of the established ranches had escaped heavy losses; so heavy, indeed, that the owners faced the option of going broke or of exterminating the rustlers. Once or twice the thieves had nearly been caught red-handed, but the leader of the outlaws had saved the men by the most daring strategy. Healy, until lately foreman of the Twin Star outfit, had organized the ranchmen as a protective association. In this he had represented Weaver, himself not popular enough to coöperate with the other ranchmen. Once Brill had led the pursuit of the rustlers and had come back furious from a long futile chase. For among the cattle being driven across to Sonora were five belonging to him. Other charges also lay against the hill outlaws. A stage had been robbed with a gold shipment from the Diamond Nugget mine. A cattleman had been held up and relieved of two thousand dollars, just taken as part payment for a sale of beef steers. The sheriff of Noches County, while trying to arrest a rustler, had been shot dead in his tracks. Brill Healy leaned forward, gathered the eyes of those present, and lowered his voice to a whisper. "Boys, this thing has got to stop. I've sent for Bucky O'Connor. If anybody can run the coyotes to earth he can. Anyhow, that's the reputation he's got." Yeager nodded. "Good for you, Brill. He's ce'tainly got an A-one rep. as a cattle detective, and likewise as a man hunter. When is he coming?" "He writes that he's got a job on hand that will keep him busy a couple of weeks, anyhow. After that we'll hear from him. I'm going to drop everything else, if necessary, and stay right with him on this job till he finishes it right," Healy promised. "Now you're shoutin', Brill. Here, too. It's money in our pocket to stop this thing right now, even if we pay big for it. No use jest sittin' around till we're stole blind," assented Slim. "It won't cost us anything. Buck, he pays the freight. The waddies have been hitting him right hard lately and he figures it will be up to him to clean them out. Course we expect help from you boys when we call on you." "Sure. We'll all be with you till the cows come home, Brill," nodded one little fellow called Purdy. He was looking at a dust patch rising from the Bear Creek trail, and slowly moving toward them. "What's the name of this new nester, Jim?" Budd, by way of being a curiosity on the range, was a fat man with a big double chin. He was large as well as fat, and, by queer contrast, the voice that came from that mountain of flesh was a small falsetto scarce above a whisper. "Didn't hear his name. Had no talk with him. Hear he is called Keller," he said. "What's he look like?" "You-all can see for yourself. This here's the gent rolling a tail this way." The little cloud of dust had come nearer and disclosed as its source a rider on a rangy roan with four white-stockinged feet. Drawing up in front of the porch, the man swung himself easily from the saddle and glanced around. "Evening, gentlemen," he said pleasantly. Some nodded grimly, some growled an acknowledgment of his greeting. But the lack of cordiality, the presence of hostility, could not be doubted. The young man stood at supple ease before them, one hand resting on his hip and the other on the saddle. He let his unabashed gaze travel from one to another, understood perfectly what those expressionless eyes of stone were telling him, and, with a little laugh of light derision, trailed debonairly into the store. "Any mail for Larrabie Keller?" he inquired of the postmistress. The girl at the window glanced incuriously at him and turned to look. When she pushed his letter through the grating he met for an instant a flash of dark eyes from a mobile face which the sun and superb health had painted to a harmony of gold and russet, with the soft glow of pink pushing through the tan. The unexpectedness of the picture magnetized his gaze. Admiration, frank and human, shone from the steel-gray eyes that had till now been only a mask. Beneath his steady look she flushed indignantly and withdrew from the window. Convicted of rudeness, the last thing he had meant, Keller returned to the porch and leaned against the door jamb while he opened his letter. His appearance immediately sandbagged conversation. Stony eyes were focused upon him incuriously, with expressionless hostility. He noted, however, an exception. Another had been added to the group, a lad of about eighteen, slim and swarthy, with the same dark look of pride he had seen on the face at the stamp window. It was easy to guess that they were brother and sister, very likely twins, though he found in the boy's expression a sulky impatience lacking in hers. Perhaps the lad needed the discipline that life hammers into those who want to be a law unto themselves. With an insolence extremely boyish, the lad turned to Healy. "I'm for running out a few of these nesters. We've got more than we can use, I reckon. The range is overstocked now—both with them and cows. Come a bad year and half of our cattle will starve." There was a moment of surcharged silence. Phil Sanderson had voiced the growing feeling of them all, but he had flung it out as a stark challenge before the time was ripe. It was one thing to resent the coming of settlers; it was quite another to set themselves openly against the law that allowed these men to homestead the natural parks in the hills. Brill Healy laughed. "The fat's in the fire now, sure enough. Just the same, I back your play, Phil." He turned recklessly to the man in the doorway. "You may tell your friends up on Bear Creek that we own this range and mean to hold it. We don't aim to let our cattle be starved, and we don't aim to lie down before rustlers. Understand?" The nester smiled, but there was no gayety in his eyes. They met those of the cattleman with a grip of steel, and measured strength with him. Each knew the other would go the limit before Keller made quiet answer: "I think so." And with that he dismissed the subject and his unfriendly audience. With perfect ease, he read his letter, pocketed it, and whistled softly as he impassively took stock of the scenery. Apparently he had wiped Public Opinion from his map, and was interested only in the panorama before him. Seven Mile Ranch lay rooted at the desert terminus among the foothills, a gateway between the mountains and the Malpais Plain. Below was a shimmering stretch of sand and cactus tortured beneath a blazing sun. Into that caldron with its furnace-cracked floor the sun had poured itself torridly for countless eons. It was a Sahara of mirage and desolation and death. To the left was a flat-topped mesa eroded to fantastic mockery of some bastioned fort. In the round-topped hills behind it was Noches, fifty miles away. Beyond lay the tangle of hills, rising to the saw-toothed range now painted with orange and mauve and a hint of deepening purple. For dusk was already slipping down over the peaks. "Mail's been open half an hour, boys," Phyllis announced through the open window. They dropped in to the store, as noisy as schoolboys, but withal deferential. It was clear the young postmistress reigned a queen among the younger ones, but a queen that deigned to friendship with her subjects. Some of them called her Miss Sanderson, one or two of them Phyllie. Among these last was Healy, who appeared on very good terms with her indeed. He appointed himself a sort of master of ceremonies, and handed to each man his mail with appropriate jocular comments designed to embarrass the recipient. He knew them all, and his hits were greeted with gay laughter. To the man standing in the doorway with his back to them, they seemed all one happy family—and himself a rank outsider. He trailed down the steps and swung himself to the saddle. As he loped away the sound of her warm, clear laughter floated after him. CHAPTER III CAUGHT RED-HANDED From a cleft in the hills two riders emerged, following a little gulch to the point where it widened into a draw. The alkali dust of Arizona lay thick upon their broad-brimmed Stetsons and every inch of exposed surface, but through the gray coating bloomed the freshness of youth. It rang from their voices, was apparent in the modelling and carriage of their figures. The young man was sinewy and hard as nails, the girl supple and wiry, of a slender grace, straight-backed as an Indian in the saddle. Just where the draw dipped down into the grassy park they drew rein an instant. Faint and far a sound drifted to them. Somebody down in the park had fired a rifle. "I don't agree with you, Phil," the girl said, picking up the thread of their conversation where they had dropped it some minutes earlier. "The nesters have as much right here as we have. They come here to settle, and they take up government land. Why shouldn't they?" "Because we got here first," he retorted impatiently. "Because our cattle and sheep have been feeding on the land they are fencing. Because they close the water holes and the creeks and claim they are theirs. It means the end of the open range. That's what it means." "Of course that's what it means. We'll have to adapt ourselves to it. You talk foolishness when you make threats to drive out the nesters. That is the sort of thing Buck Weaver has been trying to do. It's absurd. The law is back of them. You would only come to trouble, and if you did succeed others would take their places." "And rustle our cattle," he added sullenly. "It isn't proved they are the rustlers. You haven't a shred of evidence. Perhaps they are, but you should prove it before you make the charge." "If they aren't, who is?" he flared up. "I don't know. But whoever it is will be caught and punished some day. There is no doubt at all about that." "You talk a heap of foolishness, Phyl," he answered resentfully. "My notion is they never will be caught. What makes you so sure they will?" They had been riding down the draw, and at this moment Phyllis looked up, to see a rider silhouetted against the sky line on the ridge above. "Oh, you Brill!" she cried, with a wave of her quirt. The man turned, saw them, and rode slowly down. He nodded, after the fashion of the range, first to the girl, and then to her brother. "Morning," he nodded. "Headed for Mesa? Here, too." He fell in with them and rode beside the girl. Presently they topped a little hillock, and looked down into the park. It had about the area of a mile, and was perhaps twice as long as broad. Wooded spurs ran down from the hills into it here and there, and through the meadow leaped a silvery stream. "Hello! Wonder where that smoke comes from?" It was Healy that spoke. He pointed to a faint cloud rising from a distance. Even before he began to speak, however, Phyllis had her field glasses out, and was adjusting them to her eyes. "There's a fire there and a man standing over it," she presently announced. "There's something else there, too. I can't make it out—something lying down." The men glanced at each other, and in the meeting of their eyes some intelligence passed between them. It was as if the younger accused and the older sullenly denied. "Lemme have the glasses," Phil said to his sister almost roughly. Healy glanced at Phil swiftly, covertly, as the latter adjusted the glasses. "She's right about the fire and the man. I can see as much with my naked eyes," he cut in. The boy looked long, lowered the glasses, and met his friend's eye with a kind of shamefaced hesitation. But apparently he gathered reassurance from the quiet steadiness with which the other's gaze met him. He handed the glasses to Healy. When the latter lowered them his face was grave. "There's a man and a fire and a cow and a calf. When these four things meet up together, what does it mean?" "Branding!" cried the girl. "That's right—branding. And when the cow is dead what does it mean?" Brill asked, his eyes full on Phil. "Rustling!" she breathed again. "You've said it, Phyl. We've got one of them at last," he cried jubilantly. Phil, hanging between doubt and suspicion and shame, brightened at the enthusiasm of the other. "Right you are, Brill. We'll solve this mystery once for all." Healy, unstrapping the case in which lay his rifle, shot a question at the boy. "Armed, Phil?" The lad nodded. "I brought my six-gun for rattlesnakes." "Are you going to—to——" cried Phyllis, the color gone from her face. "We're going to capture him alive if we can, Phyl. You're to wait right here till we come back. You may hear shooting. Don't let that worry you. We've got the drop on him, or will have. Nobody is going to get hurt if he acts sensible," Healy reassured. "Don't you move from here. You stay right where you are," her brother ordered sharply. "Yes," she said, and was aware that her throat was suddenly parched. "You'll be careful, won't you, Phil?" "Sure," he called back, as he put his horse at a canter to follow his friend up the draw. The sound of the hoofs died away, and she was alone. That they were going to circle in and out among the tangle of hills until they were opposite the miscreant, she knew, but in spite of Brill's promise she had a heart of water. With trembling fingers she raised the glasses again, and focused them on that point which was to be the centre of the drama. The man was moving about now, quite unconscious of the danger that menaced him. What she looked at was the great crime of Cattleland. All her life she had been taught to hold it in horror. But now something human in her was deeper than her detestation of the cowardly and awful thing this man had just done. She wanted to cry out to him a warning, and did in a faint, ineffective voice that carried not a tenth of the distance between them. She had promised to remain where she was, but her tense interest in what was doing drew her forward in spite of herself. She rode along the ridge that bordered the park, at first slowly and then quicker as the impulse grew in her to be in at the finish. The climax came. She saw him look round quickly, and in an instant his pony was at the gallop and he was lying low on its neck. A shot rang out, and another, but without checking his flight. He turned in the saddle and waved a derisive hand at the shooters, then plunged into a wash and disappeared. What inspired her she could never tell. Perhaps it was her indignation at the thing he had done, perhaps her anger at that mocking wave of the hand with which he had vanished. She wheeled her horse, and put it at a canter down the nearest draw so as to try to intercept him at right angles. Her heart beat fast with excitement, but she was conscious of no fear. Before she had covered half the distance, she knew she was going to be too late to cut off his retreat. Faintly, she heard the rhythm of hoofs striking the rocky bottom of the draw. Abruptly they ceased. Wondering what that could mean, she found her answer presently. For the pounding of the galloping broncho had renewed itself, and closer. The man was riding up the gulch toward her. He had turned into its mesquite-laced entrance for a hiding place. Phyllis drew rein, and waited quietly to confront him, but with a pulse that hammered the moments for her. A white-stockinged roan, plowing a way through heavy sand, labored into view round the bend, its rider slewed in the saddle with his whole attention upon the possible pursuit. Not until he was almost upon her did the man turn. With a startled exclamation at sight of the motionless figure, he pulled up sharply. It was the nester, Keller. "You," she cried. "Happy to meet you, Miss Sanderson," he told her jauntily. His revolver slid into its holster, and his hat came off in a low bow. White, even teeth gleamed in a sardonic smile. "So you are a—rustler," she told him scornfully. "I hate to contradict a lady," he came back, with a kind of bitter irony. She saw something else, a deepening stain that soaked slowly down his shirt sleeve. "You are wounded." "Am I?" "Aren't you?" "Come to think of it, I believe I am," he laughed shortly. "Badly?" "I haven't got the doctor's report yet." There was a gleam of whimsical gayety in his eyes as he added: "I was going to find him when I had the good luck to meet up with you." He was a hunted miscreant, wounded, riding for his life as a hurt wolf dodges to shake off the pursuit, but strangely enough her gallant heart thrilled to the indomitable pluck of him. Never had she seen a man who looked more the vagabond enthroned. His crisp bronze curls and his superb shoulders were bathed in the sunpour. Not once, since his eyes had fallen on her, had he looked back to see if his hunters had picked up the lost trail. He was as much at ease as if his whole thought at meeting her were the pleasure of the encounter. "Can you ride?" she demanded. "I can stick on a hawss if it's plumb gentle. Leastways I've been trying to for twenty years," he drawled. Her impatient gesture waved his flippancy aside. "I mean, are you too much hurt to ride? I'm not going to leave you here like a wounded coyote. Can you follow me if I lead the way?" "Yes, ma'am." She turned. He followed her obediently, but with a ghost of a smile still flickering on his face. "Am I your prisoner, Miss Sanderson?" he presently wanted to know. "I'm not thinking of prisoners just now," she answered shortly, with an anxious backward glance. Presently she pulled up and wheeled her horse, so that when he halted they sat facing each other. "Let me see your arm," she ordered. Obediently he held out to her the one that happened to be nearest. It was the unwounded one. An angry spark gleamed in her eye. "This is no time to be fresh. Give me the other." "Yes, ma'am." he answered, with deceptive meekness. Without comment, she turned back the sleeve which came to the wrist gauntlet, and discovered a furrow ridged by a rifle bullet. It was a clean flesh wound, neither deep nor long enough to cause him trouble except for the immediate loss of blood. To her inexperience it looked pretty bad. "A plumb scratch," he explained. She took the kerchief from her neck, and tied it about the hurt, then pulled down the sleeve and buttoned it over the brown forearm. All this she did quite impersonally, her face free of the least sympathy. "Thank you, ma'am. You're a right friendly enemy." "It isn't a matter of friendship at all. One couldn't leave a wounded jack rabbit in pain," she retorted coldly, taking up the trail again. There was room for two abreast, and he chose to ride beside her. "So you tied me up because it was your Christian duty," he soliloquized aloud. "Just the same as if I had been a mangy coyote that was suffering." "Exactly." He let his cool eyes rest on her with a hint of amusement. "And what were you thinking of doing with me now, ma'am?" "I'm going to take you up to Jim Yeager's mine. He is doing his assessment work now, and he'll look out for you for a day or two." "Look out for me in a locked room?" he wanted to know casually. "I didn't say so. It isn't my business to arrest criminals," she told him icily. His eyes gleamed mischief. "Is it your business to help them to escape?" "I'm not helping you to escape. I'll not risk your dying in the hills alone. That is all." "Jim Yeager is your friend?" "Yes." "And you guarantee he'll keep his mouth padlocked and not betray me?" "He'll do as he pleases about that," she said indifferently. "Then I don't reckon I'll trouble his hospitality. Good-by, Miss Sanderson. I've enjoyed meeting you very much." He checked his pony and bowed. "Where are you going?" the girl exclaimed. "Up Bear Creek." "It's twenty miles. You can't do it." "Sure I can. Thanks for your kindness, Miss Sanderson. I'll return the handkerchief some day," and with a touch swung round his pony. "You're not going. I won't have it, and you wounded!" He turned in the saddle, smiling at her with jaunty insouciance. "I'll answer for Jim. He won't betray you," she promised, subduing her pride. "Thanks. I'll take your word for it, but I won't trouble your friend. I've had all the Christian charity that's good for me this mo'ning," he drawled. At that she flamed out passionately: "Do you want me to tell you that I like you, knowing what you are? Do you want me to pretend that I feel friendly when I hate you?" "Do you want me to be under obligations to folks that hate me?" he came back with his easy smile. "You have lost a lot of blood. Your arm is still bleeding. You know I can't let you go alone." "You're ce'tainly aching for a chance to be a Good Samaritan, Miss Sanderson." With this he left her. But he had not gone a hundred yards before he heard her pony cantering after his. One glance told him she was furious, both at him and at herself. "Did you come after your handkerchief, ma'am? I'm not through with it yet," he said innocently. "I'm going with you. I'm not going to leave you till we meet some one that will take charge of you," she choked. "It isn't necessary. I'm much obliged, ma'am, but you're overestimating the effect of this pill your friend injected into me." "Still, I'm going. I won't have your death on my hands," she told him defiantly. "Sho! I ain't aimin' to pass over the divide on account of a scratch like this. There's no danger but what I can look out for myself." She waited in silence for him to start, looking straight ahead of her. He tried in vain to argue her out of it. She had nothing to say, and he saw she was obstinately determined to carry her point. Finally, with a little chuckle at her stubbornness, he gave in and turned round. "All right. Yeager's it is. We're acting like a pair of kids, seems to me." This last with a propitiatory little smile toward her which she disdained to answer. Yeager saw them from afar, and recognized the girl. "Hello, Phyllis!" he shouted down. "With you in a minute." The girl slipped to the ground, and climbed the steep trail to meet him. Her crisp "Wait here," flung over her shoulder with the slightest turn of the head, kept Keller in the saddle. Halfway up she and the man met. The one waiting below could not hear what they said, but he could tell she was explaining the situation to Yeager. The latter nodded from time to time, protested, was vehemently overruled, and seemed to leave the matter with her. Together they retraced their way. Young Yeager, in flannel shirt and half-leg miner's boots, was a splendid specimen of bronzed Arizona. His level gaze judged the man on horseback, approved him, and met him eye to eye. "Better light, Mr. Keller. If you come in we'll have a look at your arm. An accident like that is a mighty awkward thing to happen to a man on the trail. It's right fortunate Miss Sanderson found you so soon after it happened." The nester knew a surge of triumph in his blood, but it did not show in the impassive face which he turned upon his host. "It was right fortunate for me," he said, swinging from the saddle. Incidentally he was wondering what story had been narrated to Yeager, but he took a chance without hesitation. "A fellow oughtn't to be so careless when he's got a gun in his hand." "You're right, seh. In this country of heavy underbrush a man's gun is liable to go off and hit somebody any time if he ain't careful. You're in big luck you didn't shoot yourself up a heap worse." Yeager led the way to his cabin, and offered Phyllis the single chair he boasted, and the nester a seat on the bed. Sitting beside him, he examined the wound and washed it. "Comes to being an invalid I'm a false alarm," Keller said apologetically. "I didn't want to come, but Miss Sanderson would bring me." "She was dead right, too. Time you had ridden twenty miles through the hot sun with that wound you would have been in a raging fever." "One way and another I'm quite in her debt." "That's so," agreed Yeager, intent on his work. She refused to meet the nester's smile. "Fiddlesticks! You talk mighty foolish, Jim. I wouldn't go away and leave a wounded dog if I could help it." "Suppose the dog were a sheep-killer?" Keller asked with his engaging, impudent smile. A dust cloud rose from her skirt under a stroke of the restless quirt. "I'd do my best for it and let it settle with the law afterward." "Even if it were a wolf caught in a trap?" "I should put it out of its pain. No matter how much I detested it, I wouldn't leave it there to suffer." "I'm quite sure you wouldn't," the wounded man agreed. Yeager looked from one to the other, not quite catching the drift of the underlying meaning. Another thing puzzled him, too. But, like most men of the unfenced Southwest, Yeager had a large capacity for silence. Now he attended strictly to his business, without mentioning what he had noticed. The wound dressed, Phyllis rose to leave. "You'll be down for your mail to-morrow, Jim," she suggested, as she sauntered toward the door. "Sure. I'll let you know how our patient is getting along." "Oh, he's yours. I don't want any of the credit," she returned carelessly. Then, the words scarce off her lips, she gave a little cry of alarm, and stepped quickly back into the room. What she had seen had sapped the color from her face. Yeager started forward, but she waved him back. "It's Phil and Brill Healy. You've got to hide us, Jim," she told him tensely. The nester began to grin. He always did when he faced a difficulty apparently insurmountable. Also his fingers slid toward the butt of his revolver. CHAPTER IV "I'M A RUSTLER AND A THIEF, AM I?" Jim swept the cabin with a gesture. "Where can I hide you? Anyhow, there are the horses in plain sight." Phyllis took imperious control. "Get a coat on him, Jim," she ordered. At the same time she caught up the basin of bloodstained water and flung its contents through the open window. The torn linen and the stained handkerchief she tossed into a corner and covered with a gunny sack. "Not a word about the wound, Jim. Mr. Keller is here to help you do your assessment work, remember. And whatever I say, don't give me away." Yeager nodded. He had manoeuvred the wounded arm through the coat sleeve and was straightening out the shoulders. The nester's eyes were shining with excitement. Alone of the three, he was enjoying himself. "Remember now. Don't talk too much. Let me run this," the girl cautioned, and with that she stepped to the door, caught sight of her brother with a glad little cry of apparent relief, and ran swiftly to him. "Oh, Phil!" she almost sobbed, and the stress of her emotion was genuine enough, even if she dissembled as to the cause. The boy patted her dark hair gently. They were twins, without other near relatives except their father, and the tie between them was close. "What is it, Phyllie? Why didn't you stay where we left you?" "I was afraid for you. And I rode a little nearer. Then he came straight toward me—and I rode away. I could hear him crashing through the mesquite. When I reached the trail of Jim's mine, I followed it, for I knew he would be here." "Sure. Course she was scared. What woman wouldn't be? We oughtn't both to have left her. But there wasn't one chance in a thousand of his stumbling on the very spot where she was," said Healy. Phil gentled her with a caressing hand. "It's all right now, sis. Did you happen to see the fellow at all?" "Yes. At a distance." "I don't suppose you would know him," Healy said. She gave a strained little laugh. "I didn't wait to get a description of him. Didn't you boys recognize him?" After Phil's answer she breathed freer. "We did not get near enough, though Brill got two shots at him as he pulled out. He was going hell-for-leather and Brill missed both times." He lowered his voice and asked angrily: "What's he doing here?" For Keller had followed Yeager from the cabin and was standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. He wore no hat, and had the manner of one very much at home. "He's helping Jim with his assessment work," she answered in the same low tone. "It's too bad you lost the rustler. He must have broken for the hills." Healy's eyes had narrowed to slits. Now he murmured a question: "What about this man Keller? Was he here when you came, Phyl?" The girl turned to Yeager, who had sauntered up. "Didn't you say he came this morning, Jim?" Yeager's eyes were like a stone wall. "Yep. This mo'ning. I needed some husky guy to help me, so I got him." "Funny you had to get a fellow from Bear Creek to help you, Jim." "Are you looking for a job, Brill?" "No. Why?" "Because I ain't noticed any stampede this way among the boys to preempt this job. I take a man where I can find him, Brill, and I don't ask you to O.K. him." "I see you don't, Jim. The boys aren't going to like it very well, though." "Then they know what they can do about it," Yeager answered evenly, level eyes steadily on those of his critic. "What time did this nester get here, Jim?" broke in Phil. Yeager's opaque eyes passed from Healy to Sanderson. "It might have been about eight." "Then he couldn't be the man," the boy said to Healy, almost in a whisper. "What man?" Jim asked. "We ran on a rustler branding a C.O. calf. We got close enough to take a shot at him. Then he slid into some arroyo, and we lost him," Phil exclaimed. "How long ago was this?" asked Yeager. "About an hour since we first saw him. Beats all how he ever made his getaway. We were right after him when he gave us the slip." "Oh, he gave you the slip, did he?" "Dropped into some hole and pulled it in after him. These hills are built for hide and seek, looks like." "Notice the color of his horse?" "It was a roan, Jim. Something like that nester's." Phil nodded toward the animal Keller had ridden. All eyes focused hard on the horse with the white stockings. "What brand was he putting on the calf? That'll tell you who the man was." Phil and Healy looked at each other, and the latter laughed. "That's one on us. We didn't stay to look, but got right out for Mr. Rustler." "Did he kill the cow?" Phil nodded. "Then you'll find the calf still hanging around there unless he had a pal to drive it away." "That's right. We'll go back now and look. Ready, Phyl?" "Yes." She stepped to her horse, and swung to the saddle. Meanwhile Healy rode forward to the cabin. Through narrowed lids he looked down at the man standing in the doorway. "Give that message to your friends?" he demanded insolently. There are men who have to look at each other only once to know that there is born between them a perpetual hostility. Each of these men had felt it at the first shock of meeting eyes. They would feel it again as often as they looked at each other. "No," the nester answered. "Why not?" "I didn't care to. You may carry your own messages." "When I do I'll carry them with a gun." "Interesting if true." Keller's gaze passed derisively over him and dismissed the man. "And I hope when I come I'll meet Mr. Keller first." The nester's attention was focused indolently upon the hills. He seemed to have forgotten that the cattleman was in Arizona. Healy ripped out a sudden oath, drove the spurs in, and went down the trail with his broncho on the buck. Keller looked at Yeager and laughed, but that young man met him with a frosty eye. "I've got some questions to ask you, Mr. Keller," he said. "Unload 'em." Yeager led the way inside, offered his guest the chair, and sat down on the bed with his arms on the table which had been drawn close to it. "In the first place, I'll announce myself. I don't hold with rustlers or waddies. I'm a white man. That being understood, I want to know where we're at." "Meaning?" "Miss Phyllis unloads a story on me about you shooting yourself up accidental. Soon as I looked at you that looked fishy to me. You ain't that kind of a durn fool. Would you mind handing me a dipper of water? Thanks." Yeager tossed the water out of the window, and the dipper back into the pail. "I noticed you handed me that water with your right hand. Your gun is on your right side. Then how in Mexico, you being right-handed, did you manage to shoot yourself in the right arm below the elbow?" Keller laughed dryly, and offered no information. "Quite a Sherlock Holmes, ain't you?" "Hell, no! I got eyes in my head, though. Moreover, that bullet went in at right angles to your arm. How did you make out to do that?" "Sleight of hand," suggested the other. "No powder marks, either. And, lastly, it was, a rifle did it, not a revolver." "Anything more?" "Some. That side talk between you and Miss Phyllis wasn't over and above clear to me then. I savez it now. She hates you like p'ison, but she's too tender-hearted to give you up. Ain't that it?" "That's it." "She lied for you to me. She lied again to Phil. So did I. Oh, we didn't lie in words, but it's the same thing. Now, I wouldn't lie to save my own skin. Why then shoul...